Fighting fire with prevention

Built

From new highrise apartments in the city, to old buildings in remote communities, CJK Fire & Safety is there to ensure compliance and safety. No job is too big or too small.

To Provide Fire Preventative Solutions To The

Australia-wide.

“After practicing for five years in Sydney, my partner and I moved to Cairns, Queensland, and discovered there wasn’t a single fire safety engineering consultancy in the area,” says Knorr. “I saw the opportunity to launch my own business and today CJK Fire & Safety is the only fire safety engineering consultancy in Cairns.”

In just three years, Knorr has established her business as one of the best in the state, backed by strong relationships with fire brigades and certifiers.

A lesser-known profession in the construction industry, Knorr wants to raise awareness and further educate graduates and the wider industry in the field of fire safety.

Risk assessments and reporting

Providing reports and advice on both new build designs and existing buildings, fire safety engineers ensure buildings meet industry codes to protect the property, its occupants and the surrounding environment from the risk of fire.

“Working closely with building engineers and architects, we conduct fire risk assessments to identify areas where fire safety danger is present,” says Knorr. “From this assessment we produce a fire strategy report identifying risk mitigation actions and providing advice and recommendations on a buildings design.”

“This could include additional fire detection to allow for increased travel distances to fire exits, using non-combustible materials or ensuring locations of fire-fighting equipment are accessible.”

As buildings continue to become more complex, technology has also become an integral part of the fire safety engineering role. The CJK Fire & Safety team uses computer simulation modelling to produce effective fire safety designs.

“These designs provide a visual of things like evacuation routes and potential paths for fire and smoke spread,” adds Knorr.

Compliance

In Australia constructors are required to build in accordance with the Building Code of Australia (BCA), and Knorr says there are two ways to meet compliance in terms of fire safety when designing and constructing a building.

“The first is the prescriptive path where the code tells you that, for example, a corridor needs to be a certain length, or a window needs to be some millimetres away from a fence – if you follow these rules then you meet compliance with the BCA,” she explains.

“For unique builds on the other hand, such as architecturally complex commercial buildings, it becomes difficult for designers to follow these prescriptive requirements, and a fire safety engineer should be brought in to apply their specialist knowledge.

“Through our holistic approach we can find a solution to ensure any building, no matter how complex or unique in design, is fire safe, high performing and compliant to the BCA.”

CJK Fire & Safety can also assist in identified non-compliance issues within existing buildings, such as heritage buildings that may have complied to a code 50 years ago but no longer comply to today’s code. This also includes buildings that have been issued with an enforcement notice from Council outlining that a non-compliant structure needs to be corrected.

“In the case of existing buildings, our role is to demonstrate what the builder needs to do to make the building safe for occupants,” says Knorr. “We look for defects and identify what can be done to fix those defects without having to pull the building apart.”

“For all buildings, new and existing, we develop Performance Solutions for when a construction project, or parts of it, deviate from the prescriptive requirements of the BCA to ensure compliance with the requirements in the code.”

The CJK Fire & Safety team is also trained and experienced in providing expert witness services in building compliance legal matters.